This invention relates to a file cabinet construction and, more particularly, to such a construction including one or more shelves on which a number of boxlike containers are slidably mounted.
Known file cabinets include a plurality of relatively wide drawers which are mounted in tiers in a superimposed relationship. These drawers are mounted within a file cabinet housing so that each drawer can be individually drawn out of the cabinet housing to an extended position in which the contents of the drawer are accessible.
The individual sliding drawers in this type of cabinet construction are relatively large and become quite heavy when filled with filed material. The size and weight of these drawers make it difficult to draw them out of the cabinet housing to their extended position. Elaborate suspension mechanisms have been developed in an attempt to make it easier to withdraw these drawers from the cabinet housing but such mechanisms are expensive to build and consume valuable filing space within the cabinet.
Because of the substantial weight of drawers of this type when filled, the entire filing cabinet tends to become unstable when more than a single drawer is in its extended position because the center of gravity of the filing cabinet is moved forward out of the housing. To provide greater stability cabinets of this type are customarily provided with an interlocking system which prevents more than one drawer from being withdrawn from the housing at any one time. Without this interlocking system which adds expense and complexity to the cabinet construction, cabinets of this type can fall forward causing damage to the cabinet and its contents and possible injury to those working in the area.
Utilizing the above described relatively large drawers which customarily occupied an entire tier of prior art filing cabinets usually meant that several files relating to different matters would be placed in the same drawer. This required that either the entire contents of a given drawer had to be searched each time a worker went to the drawer for filed material, or indexing means had to be provided within the drawer to ensure that desired material could be located rapidly. If file material was removed from the drawer, the worker had to take great care to reinsert the material in the proper place.
The relatively large unitary type drawers of the prior art cabinets slid out in a horizontal plane so that it was difficult to conveniently examine filed material without physically removing it from the drawer. This was especially true when the material was filed in one of the upper tier drawers of the cabinet. For this reason it was difficult to work with the filed material while it was still in the drawer. Because of this additional otherwise unnecessary time was required to remove and replace filed material.
The present invention overcomes the above described disadvantages of the prior art filing cabinet construction by mounting a plurality of smaller individually slidable, boxlike containers on each tier of the file cabinet. Each of these containers is mounted so that it can be slid completely out of the cabinet housing; and when fully extended, the container will pivot downward over the forward edge of the tier retaining itself at a predetermined downward slope, so that filed material is easily seen and is easily accessible. The novel arrangement whereby the container is mounted on the tier permits the interior of the container to be completely accessible while holding the container firmly on the shelf to prevent it from becoming dislodged accidentally. This provides a convenient work station and will often avoid the need for removing the container from the cabinet.
Since each of the individual containers utilized in this filing cabinet occupies a relatively small portion of the available filing volume of the tier, materials relating to one or at most several files will be placed in each container. The individual containers can then be marked to make file retrieval rapid and efficient.
Because the containers utilized in this construction are smaller and lighter than prior art file drawers, a far simpler and less expensive mounting means can be utilized which provides more usable filing space since the suspension and interlock systems which consumed large amounts of space in prior art cabinets are eliminated. This inventive mounting means permits the individual containers to be removed from the shelf so that files can be removed to a remote work area. Since an entire container is removed rather than an individual file, filed materials are more likely to be kept together, and there is less chance of misplacing or losing files. When the entire container is returned to the cabinet, there is little likelihood of the returned materials being misfiled.